


you have been warned (i'm warned to be contrary)

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 19:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2399762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simmons and Fitz are supposed to be bitter rivals, as the heads of their separate secret organization's sci-tech divisions, except they don't exactly do a good job with the whole "bitter rival" thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you have been warned (i'm warned to be contrary)

**Author's Note:**

> For jsimmonss on tumblr who requested: "Simmons is now hydra and the organization names her head of the sci-tech division. Meanwhile, in the newly refound S.H.I.E.L.D., Fitz's gotten better and Coulson names him the head of their sci-tech division. Shenanigans ensue when each party try to one up one another with better tech." 
> 
> So I kind of took that and twisted it a lot, but here you go.

She’d been here long enough that everybody knew her name.

Everybody knew to watch where they stepped, to get out of her way when she was coming, and to call her _Doctor_ Simmons not Miss Simmons.

The days had bleed together long enough that she couldn’t even keep track of them anymore, meaningless holidays blurred together, the only think that’s she kept a steady count on were promotions, climbing her way to the very top right where she- “Donnie! Don’t touch that, for god’s sakes!”

“Good morning to you too, Doctor Simmons,” he replies, a little bit nervously, but there’s a smile on his face.

This wasn’t uncommon, Jemma got visitors rather often, other Hydra operatives that would sneak up to the lab either to poke at what she was working on, or attempt to hit on her while acting cool and making small talk.

Sometimes both happened at the same time.

“It would be a good morning, if I didn’t have to worry about my DNA samples freezing over,” she says, waving her hands at him so that he steps away from her lab table.

“Somebody’s touchy.”

“You don’t become the head of Hydra’s Sci-Tech Division without being a tiny bit touchy,” she just replies.

“You should be more grateful, especially since I brought you a gift,” he says, producing a Tupperware container from his backpack.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Well, it certainly isn’t my mom’s casserole,” he grins, before pressing the container in to her hands.

“I now forgive you for touching my experiments,” she says, “but don’t do it again, because I still haven’t forgiven you for freezing my fish-“

“It was an accident!”

She just arches a brow at him and takes the container back with her to a lab table in order to pry it open and reveal the goodies inside.

“Is this where you cackle like Frankenstein or something-“

“Actually,” Jemma corrects, “Doctor Frankenstein was horrified by the monster that he had created and on first sight-“

“For a second there I had forgotten how much of a nerd you were, though really I’m not sure how that was possible.”

“Don’t you have super-secret Hydra shenanigans to be getting up to?”

She doesn’t bother looking up, because he’s probably making one of those slightly upset faces that she’s become familiar with over the past years.

And as much as she usually enjoys the company of another scientist, especially one as competent as Donnie, there are some days – days like this one – where he reminds her far too much of a lab partner that she used to have.

Which could be both a blessing and a curse at times…

Though if she was being honest with herself, that wasn’t why she had sent Donnie away, it was because she expected that any minute now a phone would go off.

\---

“I’m sorry, you’re saying that Hydra broke in a secure SHIELD facility, and just took,” Fitz pauses and waves his hands at the lab table, where something that had been sitting there before was now very much missing.

“Not exactly, sir.”

He furrows his brows, which prompts the agent to continue, “they took some other meaningless files and documents, information that was public knowledge, the only thing they took that was of significance was-“

“My project,” he finishes for the poor thing.

When the agent nods once more, he just sighs and dismisses him.

 It’s not the first time that something like this has happened, in fact, it would seem that whenever he was close to certain breakthroughs Hydra would find some way to sneak in and steal his research out from under his nose.

By this point he was used to it.

Apparently being the head of the ‘newly reformed’ SHIELD, didn’t mean having more secure facilities.

He would really have to talk to Coulson about that, _again_.

But first there was somebody else that he needed to call.

He booted up the display, punched in a familiar code and waited for the screen to connect and flicker to life.

It was picked up on the first ring, because if anything his _nemesis_ was always quite prompt when it came to picking up her phone.

Her voice beats the display flickering to life and he hears a telltale and familiar voice say, “Fitz,” before he’s greeted with the sight of her, dressed in a black lab coat in an unfamiliar lab holding a plastic container in her hands like a child’s sports trophy.

“Jemma,” he replies with ease and familiar that had been built up from years as allies and then years as enemies, or whatever they were calling this now.

According to those that worked beneath him in SHIELD’s Sci-Tech Division and according to the director and heads of various other branches of SHIELD, they were supposed to be rivals or enemies, but it didn’t quite feel that way anymore.

Anymore being the keyword there.

There had been months where he felt bitterly betrayed and was very much in denial about all of this, but well it’s been far too long for him to still be holding a grudge.

“I need that back,” he says.

“What this,” she replies, still a pretty terrible liar. She hold the Tupperware container up for him to see better, raising an eyebrow in mock-confusion and says, “this is just Donnie’s mother’s casserole!”

“Sure it is.”

“Cross my heart,” she insists, because laughing a little bit.

Her laugh is still beautiful and breathtaking and that’s not even fair, he could almost close his eyes and imagine her with him again, but he’s long since learned to stop that toxic habit.

Instead he just gives her a little knowing grin and says, “so you have nothing to do with the fact that somebody, probably Hydra, broke into my lab and stole my latest project.”

“You know, it could have been AIM, they’re up to all sorts of shifty things these days,” she teases, but she cracks under pressure a moment later and says, “you know from somebody that used to get upset over cat liver you’ve really come a long way Fitz, I’m impressed.”

He grimaces at the memory, and she just laughs again.

“I miss you,” he finds himself admitting, hoping that his voice doesn’t carry over the line of their conversation, but luck has never been on his side.

She doesn’t say anything back, and he thinks that that’s probably for the best – after all, what was there to say now. They were both the heads of their respective divisions leaving now just didn’t make any sense.

He wouldn’t, if he were in her shoes.

Of course, if he were in her shoes, he never would have ended up working for Hydra, but that was another story.

“How about this,” she just says, “when I finish fixing the gross miscalculations you made, I’ll accidently leak my notes for you?”

“Accidently,” he repeats the word with a knowing grin.

“And next time I’m working on some mechanical thing you could send a team to break in and steal my designs,” she offers.

“You know, it’s not any fun if I know that it’s coming.”

“Oh please, like how you didn’t know this one was coming? I seem to remember a certain somebody getting stuck on equations and tipping me off two days ago!”

 

 


End file.
